SREDNI VASHTAR

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced
his professional opinion that the boy would not live another
five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted
for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. De Ropp,
who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was
Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she
represented those three-fifths of the world that are
necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths,
in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in
himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin
supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of
wearisome necessary things---such as illnesses and coddling
restrictions and drawn-out dulness. Without his
imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness,
he would have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. De Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have
confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she
might have been dimly aware that thwarting him ``for his
good'' was a duty which she did not find particularly
irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity
which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as
he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from
the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his
guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was
locked out---an unclean thing, which should find no
entrance.

In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many
windows that were ready to open with a message not to do
this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he
found little attraction. The few fruit-trees that it
contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as
though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an
arid waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a
market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for
their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten corner,
however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a
disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its
walls Conradin found a haven, something that took on the
varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. He had
peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly
from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but
it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one
corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy
lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet.
Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into
two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron
bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a
friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into
its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard
of small silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the
lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured
possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret
and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge
of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one
day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a
wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and
a religion. The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a
church near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the
church service was an alien rite in the House of Rimmon.
Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the
tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate
ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni
Vashtar, the great ferret. Red flowers in their season and
scarlet berries in the winter-time were offered at his
shrine, for he was a god who laid some special stress on the
fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to the Woman's
religion, which, as far as Conradin could observe, went to
great lengths in the contrary direction. And on great
festivals powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of his hutch,
an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg
had to be stolen. These festivals were of irregular
occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate some
passing event. On one occasion, when Mrs. De Ropp suffered
from acute toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the
festival during the entire three days, and almost succeeded
in persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar was personally
responsible for the toothache. If the malady had lasted for
another day the supply of nutmeg would have given out.

The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni
Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that she was an
Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest
knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately
hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. Mrs. De
Ropp was the ground plan on which he based and detested all
respectability.

After a while Conradin's absorption in the tool-shed began
to attract the notice of his guardian. ``It is not good for
him to be pottering down there in all weathers,'' she
promptly decided, and at breakfast one morning she announced
that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight.
With her short-sighted eyes she peered at Conradin, waiting
for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to
rebuke with a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning. But
Conradin said nothing: there was nothing to be said.
Something perhaps in his white set face gave her a momentary
qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the
table, a delicacy which she usually banned on the ground
that it was bad for him; also because the making of it
``gave trouble,'' a deadly offence in the middle-class
feminine eye.

``I thought you liked toast,'' she exclaimed, with an
injured air, observing that he did not touch it.

``Sometimes,'' said Conradin.

In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the
worship of the hutch-god. Conradin had been wont to chant
his praises, tonight be asked a boon.

``Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.''

The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god
he must be supposed to know. And choking back a sob as he
looked at that other empty comer, Conradin went back to the
world he so hated.

And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom,
and every evening in the dusk of the tool-shed, Conradin's
bitter litany went up: ``Do one thing for me, Sredni
Vashtar.''

Mrs. De Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not
cease, and one day she made a further journey of inspection.

``What are you keeping in that locked hutch?'' she asked.
``I believe it's guinea-pigs. I'll have them all cleared
away.''

Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his
bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and
forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her
discovery. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been
bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of
the dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen
beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there Conradin
stationed himself. He saw the Woman enter, and then be
imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and
peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick
straw bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod
at the straw in her clumsy impatience. And Conradin
fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he
knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He knew that the
Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he
loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the
gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no
longer, but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. And he knew
that the Woman would triumph always as she triumphed now,
and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering
and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing
would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be
proved right. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he
began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his
threatened idol:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew
closer to the window-pane. The door of the shed still stood
ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by.
They were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless.
He watched the starlings running and flying in little
parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over
again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A
sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still
Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope had crept by
inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to
blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience
of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he
began once again the pæan of victory and devastation.
And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that
doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes
a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around
the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees.
The great polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook
at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed
a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes.
Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.

``Tea is ready,'' said the sour-faced maid; ``where is the
mistress?'' ``She went down to the shed some time ago,''
said Conradin. And while the maid went to summon her
mistress to tea, Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the
sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of
bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of
it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it,
Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in
quick spasms beyond the dining-room door. The loud foolish
screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering
ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering
footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then,
after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of
those who bore a heavy burden into the house.

``Whoever will break it to the poor child? I couldn't for
the life of me!'' exclaimed a shrill voice. And while they
debated the matter among themselves, Conradin made himself
another piece of toast.